


Bear me away on your snow white wings

by LoversAntiquities



Series: Codas [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, POV Second Person, Post-Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe In Miracles?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1990749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoversAntiquities/pseuds/LoversAntiquities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t want to be free. You just want your brother back.</p><p>A post S9 Coda</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bear me away on your snow white wings

He tells you he’s proud of you, of _us_ , and that’s the last you ever hear from him. For all you know, his soul is eternally damned. It could be the other way around – maybe he could be in Heaven, sitting at the dinner table with your mother waiting for the pie he never quite got. Or maybe he just doesn't exist at all. A soul damned to wander the earth with no particular destination. And somehow, even after you burn his bones later, you don't think that would quite put him to rest. The least could be said for yourself, as well.

He looks pained atop your bed, you think; lips tinged blue, face pale, blood soaking through his clothes and into your sheets. It’ll never come out – a permanent reminder of the day your brother died, never to return. You never even got to apologize, even though in your heart, you still felt you were right. He shouldn't have done what he did. Letting you be possessed without your knowledge, despite the fact it was for the greater good. You wanted to die – he wouldn't let you. And that’s the way it always goes, isn’t it? One can’t exist without the other. One way or another, you always come back topside. Either way, you forgave him. Because he’s your brother. _Was._

He isn’t coming back, though. Not this time. After what he burdened himself with, even if he came back, he wouldn’t be the same. And now you’re left to deal with the ever present ‘what if.’

What if you had gotten to him in time? If you could’ve helped gank Metatron, could’ve gotten him into a corner and shived him with his own blade? If the two of you actually worked together on this one? But no. He was set in his own ways, and so were you. Determination and bloodlust drove him to his death – what about you?

Your mourning takes place via whatever scotch and whiskey you find in tumblers and half drunk bottles. It doesn't help. You can’t get drunk enough to get his face out of your mind, his final words resounding endlessly in your head. Even when you sleep, you dream of that warehouse. You dream that things turned out differently, but every time the two of you leave, he dies. Always in different ways. Always, those words.

_I’m proud of us._

He stays in your room for four days before the stench becomes unbearable. You have to do something with him that doesn't involve talking to a corpse for hours on end and drinking yourself into a poisonous stupor. You haven’t eaten in days; what you have, you’ve promptly vomited into the sink. You begin to see through his eyes how he felt when _you_ first passed. When he sold his soul to give you another chance. But this time is different.

This time, not even _Crowley_ will make a deal with you. He won’t even show _up_. The man’s dropped off the face of the earth, and you can only begin to wonder exactly what that means.

Your initial prayers to Castiel go unanswered for days. You begin to wonder if everyone really _has_ left you. Dean’s dead down the hall, Charlie’s in Oz for God knows how long, your list of connections is wearing thin, and now even the Angel that helped save your life is on the lam. Maybe alcohol poisoning is a suitable, more tortuous alternative for taking your gun and shoving it down your throat. You may have wanted Dean to give you space in life, hell, maybe even get _out_ of your life, but you never wanted this. You never wanted him _dead_.

By the time you begin to gather wood for your pyre out back, you see the Angel standing at the tree line. Trench coat sagging off broad shoulders, hands grasping uselessly at air. He’s sad. Anguished. A tad bit suicidal. Then again, you’re probably projecting. Though the closer you get to him with branches in your arms, you take him in for what he really is. What he’s become.

He mourns in his own way – he doesn’t speak, he drinks like it’s water but never gets tipsy, and spends the entire day at your side. He refuses to go look at the body; you know if he does, he’ll probably take his sword and stab his own eyes out. His grace would burn out _much_ faster that way. He refuses to join you in your wood gathering. Later that afternoon, you hear him finalizing a call to what you assume is a memorialist, and then he disappears for an hour and takes your wallet with him. You don’t ask questions.

He convinces you later not to burn his body, on the grounds that if you can actually _find_ his soul, you could bring him back. But you know that’s not the reason. You _know_ , really. And you tell him so, and he doesn't deny the fact. The two of them had been dancing around their feelings for over half a decade, tension abound. It used to be funny. Now it’s heartbreaking, _knowing_ nothing ever came of it. It could have been a beautiful thing. Your brother finally getting his head out of his ass and finding happiness, and Castiel finally embracing just what he was falling for.

You agree to the burial, and begin to dig. He helps you dig the six-foot plot, neither of you speaking the entire time. Neither of you want to see his body burn. It’d only solidify just how wrong it all turned out. He was supposed to stay by your side. Heaven was supposed to reopen, Metatron was supposed to die in a flash of light. Instead, your brother’s time finally came. And you can’t _stand_ it.

You don't cry, because there’s no time for that. But you’re dying on the inside, just a breath away from slitting your veins. Castiel would probably let you, you think. He’d probably join in on the revelry. Make a big party of it, send out letters to everyone you know that's alive and tell them they can get along without you. They’ve done it so far.

Though, you have to stop halfway through and continue your purge beneath a tree, praying to whatever God there is that you don’t puke up part of your stomach in the process. It’s too much to handle. Castiel strokes along your back with dirt-stained hands. It’s a small semblance of comfort, but it means the world. This is harder than the pyre. Knowing he’ll still be there by nightfall, rotting away beneath your feet, and you don’t think you can deal with that.

You tell him so – he says he understands, but doesn't wish that you end your life in that manner. “You can have a life away from here,” he tells you, “you have great potential, and always have. You can give up this life, Sam. You can be free.”

But you don’t want to be free. You just want your brother back.

With the moon high in the Kansas sky, you both carry Dean’s body to the forest and place his emaciated form into the plot. You say nothing – you don’t think your voice would carry. Castiel offers a prayer up to the God you know isn’t listening, to keep his soul safe and pure, wherever it is. And you cover him, shovel by shovel, until you can’t see his face and a mound begins to take form.

You sit on the steps of the back entrance later, shaken to your core, watching Castiel drag with him just what he had called in for hours before. The base of a monument, inscribed with the Latin for ‘Righteous.’ With the last of his strength, he smooths out the dirt and places the stone there, rubbing his hands over the concrete tentatively. He says something to the stone. You don’t bother to read his lips. It’s not for you, anyway.

He doesn’t leave the stone. At midnight after the shock has subsided, you head inside and sleep for what feels like a week. Two days later, you wander the halls of the bunker, full and well expecting Dean to drag his ass into the kitchen and start the coffee machine. You expect Castiel to wander in behind him, greeting the two of you like it’s a regular thing.

None of that happens.

You find him dead that morning, his form draped over the marker, skin and clothing the same color and material as the headstone he purchased just days before. You’ve only recently heard of an Angel’s grace being able to burn out, but part of you wonders if this is what happens when it does. He’s made of concrete, cold to the touch. Tears stream from closed eyes, wings stretched to embrace the stone and the plot. His clothed feet have dug holes into the dirt. One hand clutches the marker with his head resting silently on his arm, another draped over the edge, reaching for something that’s not there, that won’t ever be there. 

You don’t know when it happened, but with it, you feel that Castiel is at peace. Maybe they both are. In the morning light with the sun shining through the trees, he almost looks like he’s at rest. No Angel would have come to save his grace. Maybe this was his last stand. He knew he was dying; he wanted to see you before he did. Angel’s weren’t meant to feel as he did, and the three of you knew it. This is the proof.

The proof that an Angel fell for a mortal man, immortalized in stone. And until your brother rots away, until you join him in however long it takes for you to die, until the end of the world, it’ll be there. A constant reminder of the words never spoken, the love never expressed, two lost souls fit to wander without each other until the day the earth dies. If you weren’t crying before, you are now, kneeling before the monument with your head in your hands.

You don’t know what to do.

You don't think you ever will.

**Author's Note:**

> Normally whenever I read/write, I don't really get affected by things, but I can tell you I legitimately cried writing this. I'm sorry if I broke your soul.
> 
> Also this is inspired by the fanart by [midget-banana on tumblr](http://midget-banana.tumblr.com/post/92066287875/their-greatest-asset-is-their-greatest-curse), and it sparked about three different storylines I wanted to write. This is what I came up with. I'm so sorry ;A;
> 
> Title is from the hymn, "Angel Band."
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://tragidean.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/loversantiquity).


End file.
